


Shooting the Messenger

by mightbeanasshole



Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 04:15:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6141187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightbeanasshole/pseuds/mightbeanasshole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Howard got his wingtip in the door by delivering bad news – because that’s what good-looking peons getting their start in business law do. Like most things he set his mind to, Howard was good at it. Excellent at firing people; even better at handing out evictions. Calm and cool, Howard would work his mouth around the bad news and strike that delicate balance between being assertive and consoling. The eyebrows said “hate to see you go,” the perfect white smile said “no room for negotiation,” and the steel backbone communicated that if they wanted to shoot the messenger, they’d damned well better aim to kill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shooting the Messenger

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted & inspired by [Chester](http://partyinthemysterymachine.tumblr.com)

The first time Howard Hamlin came into his own hand thinking about Jimmy McGill, he couldn’t believe himself.

The second time – like most things – had been easier. 

Back in law school, Howard read somewhere that after you do something 21 times, it takes the form of a habit – so maybe, he thinks, it’s a habitual thing now.

—

If Howard had to put a calendar date on the genesis of the fascination, it was around the time that Chuck sent him downstairs to the mail room.

Howard got his wingtip in the door by delivering bad news – because that’s what good-looking peons getting their start in business law do. Like most things he set his mind to, Howard was good at it. Excellent at firing people; even better at handing out evictions. Calm and cool, Howard would work his mouth around the bad news and strike that delicate balance between being assertive and consoling. The eyebrows said “hate to see you go,” the perfect white smile said “no room for negotiation,” and the steel backbone communicated that if they wanted to shoot the messenger, they’d damned well better aim to kill.

Maybe Howard should’ve paused when Chuck sent him to deliver a message to Jimmy that should’ve come from his own flesh and blood. Maybe he could’ve checked his chilled professionalism for the half a second it would’ve taken to ask, _“Are you sure it should be me, Chuck?”_

But he hadn’t. There were 50 other things on his mind that day – just like always – and delivering bad news was right in Howard’s wheelhouse. _No sweat, Chuck._ Another familiar day. Another familiar hallway to tap down in shining Salvatore Ferragamos. Rework the boilerplate to make it right for Jimmy – slip the definitive _no_ in between a compliment and firm plan for reassessment in the future.

It hadn’t been like those others times. The first years.

With a plate of sickly-sweet sheet cake in his hand, Howard watched Jimmy’s spine straighten out like an Olympic athlete ready to receive his gold, his mirth at what he thought would be a job offer only barely contained. How many times had Jimmy practiced that quasi-professional neutrality? A mask of objectivity had slipped across Jimmy’s face like some sort of amateur impression of the real cultivated stoicism that Howard could so easily conjure up.

Jimmy had kept it together for a sentence or two. But that equitable indifference wasn’t the type of thing that you could get through a correspondence course, no matter how hard Jimmy had worked at it. It crumbled visibly before Jimmy could press his mouth into a hard line. His spine slumped and something hard worked its way into his expression and Howard knows, looking back, that Jimmy had hated him before then, but perhaps that moment had been the first time Jimmy faced it himself.

The rest of their conversation hadn’t mattered. Howard’s own neutrality hadn’t faltered.

He wouldn’t say he felt bad about it. The encounter left him with a miasma of something like regret – but that was as easily compartmentalized as everything else about the job. People make jokes about attorneys without wanting to admit that almost everyone envies that ability.

Howard Hamlin goddamned sleeps at night – don’t doubt it.

Something changed after that, though. Jimmy was around more, and Howard never knew if it was because he was making excuses to emerge from the mailroom every day and walk among the lawyers who had decided to keep him out, or if Howard was just _noticing him_ when he hadn’t in the past. If Jimmy saw his own presence in the office hallways as a badge of shame for those around him, he wasn’t that far off.

Because before the conversation, Howard hadn’t given Jimmy much thought. 

And afterwards, he began to feel an unexpected pull.

He _liked_ Jimmy. At least, the newer version of Jimmy, with slightly better clothes and no attempt to hide his sneer. _Hard-Working Jimmy With Nothing To Lose_ was leagues more interesting than _Chuck’s Pitiable Ex-Con Mailroom Brother._ That version of Jimmy looked Howard right in the face with an expression that urged him to _cut the shit._ That version of Jimmy had some life in him, and after spending years around clients and lawyers who were constantly on their best behavior, that sort of existence gripped Howard’s attention and held it with an intensity he couldn’t have predicted.

—

Howard Hamlin is bad news in a nice package, and he’s often nicely compensated to be the whipping boy. He gives the enemies of his clients something easy to hate so that negotiations can move forward. A steadying force, maybe.

But things break down when Howard starts protecting Jimmy from the truth. The perfectly filed and pristine boxes that he uses for compartmentalization can’t contain whatever _this is,_ whatever he’s being asked to do or whatever it is he presently finds himself compelled to do. Feelings for this man who calls Howard a hard-on to his face are hemorrhaging and gushing up against those years of methodical filing and cataloging.

It begins to color their interactions and Howard’s time alone.

It happens so often that Howard _gets used to_ the urge to pull Jimmy into the nearest unoccupied room and fuck the manic energy out of him until Jimmy has forgotten his own name and whatever dumb roughness that exists between them.

Jimmy wants Howard to crack without knowing – _really knowing –_ what that would mean, and Howard is excited by the idea that if he were to falter, if Howard really were to unload even a fraction of what he’s been packing and stacking for the past two decades, Jimmy wouldn’t have the first idea of what to do. Genuine meeting genuine for the first time. Howard doesn’t know what it would mean and can barely wrap his mind around it and it goddamned excites him.

He wants to hold Jimmy with a grip that bruises and pops buttons and snarl into Jimmy’s ear that _he’s right,_ that _he’s always been right,_ that Howard is _lower than low_ and the only real difference between Jimmy-the-reformed-con and Howard-the-respected-partner is the fact that _Howard can out-Jimmy Jimmy._ And isn’t it goddamned refreshing to meet someone who envies you and _sees_ you and says it out loud at the top of his lungs every chance he gets.

Howard wants to tell someone – anyone but _him_ – that being the bad guy in this is the only good thing Howard can remember doing for anyone without knowing he was going to gain something in the end.

And in between tightly-controlled fantasies about hate fucking and imagining the guttural noises he might enjoy from an in-office blow job, Howard dreams about cracking, about spilling every ounce of the truth, about letting Jimmy win and letting him get hurt and absolving himself of the whole messy martyrdom. About the way that Jimmy’s hard-lined, take-no-shit mask – more refined than the neutral one he’d tried to wear that day next to cake and balloons – would falter and then crack.

In every dream it feels like putting out a half-spent cigarette into a perfect piece of apple pie, and Howard wakes to the sound of his alarm with the taste of ash in his mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've got something specific you'd like to see, feel free to shoot me a BCS prompt idea at [bingoricopimento.tumblr.com/ask](http://bingoricopimento.tumblr.com/ask) <3


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